Media Meanings

Jack Smyth, I.V.

Monday, March 5, 2018

As a third year Communications Student at UCSB, media bias concerns me increasingly. Deceptive or dishonest communication can have many long-term negative effects on people and culture given the way we communicate both on the interpersonal level and the mass media level.

Ever since the United States was created, the media has played an integral role in how our government functions, by objectively informing the population of the state of our nation as well as holding our leaders and politicians accountable for their actions.

In recent years, a party-line bias has increased among our media sources. This bias is extremely dangerous to a functioning democracy because it prevents voters from getting fair and accurate information about the candidates they elect into office. A biased media causes the government to become all but totalitarian in that it allows whichever party that holds the media's favor to stamp out its opponents using the media as its attack dogs, rather than through fair debate and campaigning.

Now more than ever, the election of our politicians has become a heated controversy. If we as a nation ever hope to overcome this barrier and elect the officials who deserve to be elected, we must first hold our media accountable to their duty of informing us on every candidate, regardless of party.